Please forgive me as I brag that I “had” to go to Mexico for the PRSA Counselors Academy conference. Hey, I didn’t organize it (at least not this year)! The photo above is of the lovely Westin, which is where the Conference was held.
Rather than talk about PR spin today, I thought I’d list the top 10 PR lessons I learned while in Cabo.
1. Creating client service teams around your staff’s passions makes for a much more fun work environment.
2. Asking your staff once a quarter what they love about working for your company helps with recruitment – you’re talking about reality and not just your vision with job candidates.
3. Emerging media is just that – constantly emerging and we have to stay on top of all of it, not just blogs, Wiki, and Second Life.
4. Robert Scoble is sheer genius; I mean, who creates celebrity status and makes money out of a passion?
5. Use emerging media on your business first; after all your agency should be your most important client. Then create a case study to show how well it can work for your clients. There are two firms I most admire in this area: Shift Communications and Eastwick Communications.
6. The big PR firms are becoming more integtrated – we should all consider it.
7. Running a business, even if the business does PR, is still running a business – the top people have to run the business and stay out of the day-to-day work.
8. Taking your firm international isn’t as scary as it seems.
9. When interviewing prospective employees, ask yourself “could this person do my job”? If the answer is yes, hire them immediately. If the answer is no, pass on them.
10. When you put a bunch of senior-level PR people in the room, they all want to share their success and failure. But what is said in Cabo, stays in Cabo.
And three little things I learned from the mountain biking guides: When you bike down the mountain, don’t fall in a crevice, don’t fall off your bike, and don’t bleed – they don’t want to get their van dirty.